A parking assistance apparatus is a system which assists a driver to more easily and conveniently park a vehicle, recognizes a parking space using a sensor or the like mounted to the vehicle, calculates an optimum route along which the vehicle may be parked in the recognized parking space, and automatically controls a steering wheel or assists the driver in operating the steering wheel in visual and auditory manners.
As an example of the parking assistance apparatus, a parking assistance apparatus based on an ultrasonic sensor has been introduced in the corresponding technical field. The parking assistance apparatus based on the ultrasonic sensor recognizes obstacles at the periphery of the vehicle in which the driver is seated, and a parking space based on an ultrasonic signal, and creates a movement route of the vehicle and the like. However, in a case in which there is no obstacle within a predetermined distance from the vehicle in which the driver is seated, the parking assistance apparatus based on the ultrasonic sensor has a deteriorated recognition rate for the parking space, and is greatly affected by an arrangement state of obstacles at the periphery of the parking space, and as a result, there is a limitation to the use of the parking assistance apparatus based on the ultrasonic sensor, and to the environment to which the parking assistance apparatus based on the ultrasonic sensor is applied.
Recently, in order to solve the aforementioned problems, a parking assistance apparatus based on an image captured by a camera mounted to the vehicle has been developed, but also has a limitation when coping with various situations or the environment to which the parking assistance apparatus based on an image is applied.